The Blue Guy Makes Me Think

I saw the blue guy on Monday in the West Village. He was on the Today show earlier that morning and appeared to be doing a little sightseeing when I spotted him crossing the road at Christopher Street and Greenwich Avenue. I was running home to pick up something I'd forgotten, and I tried not to stare while I wondered if he was blue because he'd been drinking colloidal silver. (I hadn't seen the Today show that morning, so when I got back to work I Googled "blue guy" and this story popped up.) Turns out he did, and that's why he's blue! Both Matt Lauer and the guest doctor on the Today show cauthioned him to stop drinking the stuff--colloidal silver is not FDA approved, and silver is a heavy metal known to affect liver and kidney function--but he swears it’s done wonders for a skin condition he used to have, so he's not giving it up yet.

Apart from being amazed that I’d actually seen a blue person (he looked shockingly blue in person--like the coldest person you've ever seen), I also got to thinking about the silver-infused bike shorts I’d nearly bought online the night before. These little guys are marketed as massaging anti-cellulite tights, so I considered them for a moment, until I saw the silver bit, which smelled of nano-engineering. Lots of clothes are nano-engineered with silver, which lends anti-funk microbial properties to socks and all sorts of other athletic gear. Nobody can tell you for sure whether that's safe, and the particles they're using are so tiny that they can penetrate any physical barrier in your body--even your blood-brain barrier, should happen to end up there. (For more on that, check out this piece on the potential health effects of nano silver by Robin Henig in the Fall 2007 issue of OnEarth) I decided I don’t need the cellulite shorts, and I certainly don’t need to worry about what is seeping from my shorts, through my butt cheeks, and into my brain. I think I’ll pass, just in case. Thanks for the reality check, Blue Guy.